Theater Review: Fort Point explores memories

Sunday

Apr 6, 2014 at 9:45 PMApr 6, 2014 at 9:45 PM

By David Brooks AndrewsWicked Local Arts correspondent

Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape" plunges us into the bleakness of a 69-year-old man trying to find some shred of satisfaction listening to reel-to-reel tape recordings he made 30 years earlier.This one-man, one-hour show captures the bleakness Beckett apparently felt in his late 40s, shortly after World War II, with only a couple of books to his name, as he looks toward the end of his life. The play is filled with autobiographical hints, and so is of special interest to devotees of his writing and his life.It's also an opportunity for an actor to give a tour-de-force performance with spare material and fragments of memories. Steven Barkhimer throws himself into the role of Krapp with great intensity and gives a strong performance in Fort Point Theatre Channel's production of the play, directed by Marc S. Miller. It's paired with a companion piece, "The Archives" by Skylar Fox, a talented playwright who is a student at Brown University. It's directed by Tasia A. Jones.But "Krapp" doesn't have the playfulness, repartee, and scope of Beckett's best-known play, "Waiting for Godot." And so it's easy to feel that "Krapp" is a fairly self-absorbed piece without offering a particularly compelling theatrical experience by today's standards or a message that helps us deal with whatever darkness we may face. At this point, it seems more interesting in terms of literary and theatrical history.This piece opens with Krapp eating a couple of bananas with great pleasure, almost as if it's a sexual experience. He nearly trips on the peels, even though he has thrown one some distance away. As an older man, everything comes hard to him, including pulling out a large key chain from his pocket, bending over, and struggling to open the desk drawer where the bananas reside. Barkhimer is superb at embodying the difficulty of these actions. He wears an untucked white shirt, a brown vest with a red handkerchief in the chest pocket, and dark pants. His hair is rumpled.Krapp frequently retreats off stage to use a bathroom, as his name suggests he might need to. He grunts and groans but says no words during the long opening banana scene that has a comic, Buster Keaton quality to it, as when he struggles to bring two electric cords together and finally plugs them in, only to have the light flicker.Krapp eventually begins listening to tapes he made when he was 39 years old and younger. He listens to his younger self tell about throwing a black ball to a white dog on the day his mother died, and in the end giving the ball to the dog, rather than keeping it, which he wished he had. He listens to himself recount an incident of exchanging glances with a woman with a perambulator who threatened to call the police when he tried to talk with her. And a beautifully written segment about an intimate moment with a young woman in a punt. At times he laughs derisively at his younger self, finding no great satisfaction in the past or the present. He does delight in the word "spool," which Barkhimer gives great life to, and light reflects off the spinning plastic tape reels up into his face in a beautiful and evocative way.The fictional companion piece, "The Archives," features Mom (Karin Trachtenberg) who found the tapes that are heard in "Krapp" at a garage sale and bought them to record on. But in the end, she can't use them, because she feels the human life that's preserved on them. She sends them to her estranged daughter, Anna (Allison Smith), who takes them to a Librarian (Sally Nutt) for help in digitalizing them. In an interesting scene, Anna is inspired by the tapes to make her own recording.Smith brings welcome life and freshness to Anna. Trachtenberg as Mom tends to play the expected a little too much. In an odd choice, Nutt hits many of the stereotypes of an older Librarian.Not surprisingly, the play doesn't have nearly the density and richness of language that "Krapp" does, but after watching an hour monologue delivered by a man, it's refreshing seeing three women interact. A scene in which the librarian gives a presentation seems like a heavy-handed way of delivering a message, but the play has an intriguing and moving ending.In "Krapp," a large desk, holding cans of tapes, dominates the stage in the Factory Theatre's 49-seat black box space. Corrugated cardboard cut to resemble books stands in bookcases behind the desk. "The Anniversary" uses the desk and various corners of the stage effectively.'Reel to Reel: Krapp's Last Tape & The Archives'WHEN: Through April 12WHERE: The Factory Theatre, 791 Tremont St., BostonTICKETS: $20 ($15 for students and seniors)INFO: 800-838-3006; www.fortpointtheatrechannel.org